A single tulip bulb once cost more than a house in Amsterdam

In the 1630s, the Dutch Republic (now the Netherlands) experienced one of the first documented speculative bubbles in history — the object of the mania was tulip bulbs, especially rare, streaked varieties.

The twist that sounds unbelievable: prices for some individual bulbs reached the equivalent of over a decade's wages for a skilled tradesman — and documented deals traded a single bulb for a house, land, or even an entire farm.

Much of the trading happened on futures contracts — people bought and sold the right to bulbs that weren't even in the ground yet, purely on the speculation that prices would keep climbing.

In February 1637, the bubble burst almost overnight — prices collapsed by double-digit percentages within weeks, ruining some speculators, though the impact on the broader Dutch economy was, contrary to popular legend, far smaller than commonly believed.